Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Queen Elizabeth Hall

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These are difficult times for The Abduction from the Seraglio. Harem pants may
come in and out of fashion, but it is starting to seem as if Mozart’s harem
opera has been left on the shelf.

The fiddly title, or its mistranslation, is one problem — the abduction has
already happened, the opera is actually about the escape plan — but looming
over the whole story about two sets of lovers trying to outwit a predatory
Pasha is the tricky context. The Muslim Pasha himself, who never sings, goes
from cruel to humane. But his thuggish and oversexed servant Osmin is a